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Trust, Commitment, and Older Women: Exploring Brand Attachment Differences in the Elderly Segment
Author(s) -
Jahn Steffen,
Gaus Hansjoerg,
Kiessling Tina
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.20533
Subject(s) - socioemotional selectivity theory , psychology , moderation , social psychology , product (mathematics) , cognition , consumption (sociology) , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , social science , geometry , mathematics , communication , neuroscience , sociology
Understanding older adults’ product consumption behavior is of high importance to consumer and marketing research. Prior studies have mainly focused on older adults’ cognitive decline and compared their behavior to that of younger consumers. A neglected area of research has been older consumers’ brand attachment that is associated with potential differences between consumers in their fifties and in their seventies. In this article, the authors provide insights into the under‐researched field of elderly women's brand attachment. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory, a shift toward emotional aspects in brand relationships is proposed. A model involving trust and commitment processes is developed and empirically tested in a survey among 341 older women. Moderator analyses reveal significant differences between the “younger elderly” and the “older elderly” in relationships among self‐concept connection, partner quality, trust, and commitment. For the younger elderly, how a brand is (based on trust judgments) seems to be more important. For the older elderly, what a brand does in its role as relationship partner becomes more relevant.